The Way of Ambition. Robert Hichens
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note had abruptly changed an opinion long held by Charmian. Till it came she had believed that Claude Heath secretly disliked, perhaps even despised her. Mrs. Shiffney on half a sheet of note-paper had almost reassured her. But now would come the test. She would accept; Mrs. Shiffney would ask Claude Heath again, telling him she was to be of the party. And then what would Heath do?
As she wrote her answer Charmian said to herself, "If he accepts Mrs. Shiffney was right. If he refuses again I was right."
She sent the note to Grosvenor Square by a boy messenger, and resigned herself to a period of patience.
CHAPTER VI
By return there came a note hastily scribbled:
"Delighted. I will let you know all the particulars in a day or two.—A. S."
But two days, three days, a week passed by, and Charmian heard nothing more. She grew restless, but concealed her restlessness from her mother, who asked no questions. Claude Heath did not come to the house. As they never met him in society they did not see him at all, except now and then by chance at a concert or theater, unless he came to see them. Excited by Mrs. Mansfield's visit to him, he was much shut in, composing. There were days when he never went out of his little house, and only refreshed himself now and then by a game with Fan or a conversation with Mrs. Searle. When he was working really hard he disliked seeing friends, and felt a strange and unkind longing to push everybody out of his life. He was, therefore, strongly irritated one afternoon, eight days after Charmian had written her note of conditional acceptance to Mrs. Shiffney, when his parlor-maid, Harriet, after two or three knocks, which made a well planned and carried out crescendo, came into the studio with the announcement that a lady wished to see him.
"Harriet, you know I can't see anyone!" he exclaimed.
He was at the piano, and had been in the midst of exciting himself by playing before sitting down to work.
"Sir," almost whispered Harriet in her very refined voice, "she heard you playing, and knew you were in."
"Oh, is it Mrs. Mansfield?"
"No, sir, the lady who called the other day just before that lady came."
Claude Heath frowned and lifted his hands as if he were going to hit out at the piano.
"Where is she?" he said in a low voice.
"In the drawing-room, sir."
"All right, Harriet. It isn't your fault."
He got up in a fury and went to the tiny drawing-room, which he scarcely ever used unless some visitor came. Mrs. Shiffney was standing up in it, looking, he thought, very smart and large and audacious, bringing upon him, so he felt as he went in, murmurs and lights from a distant world with which he had nothing to do.
"How angry you are with me!" she said, lifting her veil and smiling with a careless assurance. "Your eyes are quite blazing with fury."
Claude, in spite of himself, grew red and all his body felt suddenly stiff.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "But I was working, and—"
He touched her powerful hand.
"You had sprouted your oak, and I have forced it. I know it's much too bad of me."
He saw that she could not believe she was wholly unwanted by such a man as he was, in such a little house as he had. People always wanted her. Her frankness in running after him showed him her sense of her position, her popularity, her attraction. How could she think she was undignified? No doubt she thought him an oddity who must be treated unconventionally. He felt savage, but he felt flattered.
"I'll show her what I am!" was his thought.
Yet already, as he begged her to sit down on one of his chintz-covered chairs, he felt a sort of reluctant pleasure in being with her.
"May I give you some tea?"
Her hazel eyes still seemed to him full of laughter. Evidently she regarded him as a boy.
"No, thank you! I won't be so cruel as to accept."
"But really, I am—"
"No, no, you aren't. Never mind! We'll be good friends some day. And I know how artists with tempers hate to be interrupted."
"I hope my temper is not especially bad," said Claude, stiffening with sudden reserve.
"I think it's pretty bad, but I don't mind. What a dear, funny little room! But you never sit in it."
"Not often."
"I long to see your very own room. But I'm not going to ask you."
There was a slight pause. Again the ironical light came into her eyes.
"You're wondering quite terribly why I've come here again," she said. "It's about the yacht."
"I'm really so very sorry that—"
"I know, just as I am when I'm refusing all sorts of invitations that I'd rather die than accept. Slipshod, but you know what I mean. You hate the idea. I'm only just going to tell you my party, so that you may think it over and see if you don't feel tempted."
"I am tempted."
"But you'd rather die than come. I perfectly understand. I often feel just like that. We shall be very few. Susan Fleet—she's a sort of chaperon to me; being a married woman, I need a chaperon, of course—Max Elliot, Mr. Lane, perhaps—if he can't come some charming man whom you'd delight in—and Charmian Mansfield."
Again there was a pause. Then Heath said:
"It's very, very kind of you to care to have me come."
"I know it is. I am a kind-hearted woman. And now for where we'll go."
"I really am most awfully sorry, but I'm obliged to stick to work."
"We might go down along the Riviera as far as Genoa, and then run over to Sicily and Tunis."
She saw his eyes beginning to shine.
"Or we might go to the Greek Islands and Smyrna and Constantinople. It's rather early for Constantinople, though, but perfect for Egypt. We could leave the yacht at Alexandria—"
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Shiffney, and I hope you'll have a splendid cruise. But I really can't come much as I want to. I have to work."
"When you say that you look all chin! How terribly determined you are not to enjoy life!"
"It isn't that at all."
"How terribly determined you are not to know life. And I always thought artists, unless they wished to be provincial in their work, claimed the whole world as their portion, all experience as their right. But I suppose English artists are different. I often wonder whether they are wise in clinging like limpets to the Puritan tradition. On the Continent, you know, in Paris, Berlin, Rome, Milan, and, above all, in Moscow and Petersburg, they are regarded with pity and amazement. Do forgive me! But artists abroad, and I speak universally, though I know it's generally dangerous to do that, think art is strangled by the Puritan tradition clinging round poor old England's throat."
She laughed and moved her shoulders.
"They say how can men be great artists unless they steep themselves in the stream of life."
"There are sacred rivers like the Ganges, and there are others that are foul and weedy and iridescent with poison," said Heath hotly.
She saw anger in his eyes.
"Perhaps you are getting something—some sacred cantata—ready for one of the provincial festivals?" she said. "If that is so, of course, you mustn't break the continuity with a trip to the Greek Islands